Grab Bag #50
Apartments in a park, baseball in a pasture, parents in a nightclub, and one goat.
The every-three-weeks Grab Bag emails are for Friends of Woody, who get to read all my wool-gathering wanderings through San Francisco history. If that sounds like something you would like—for about the price of one foo-foo macha latte a month—you can sign up for Friend status here.
Grab Bag Guess Where
Do you remember how to play this game? Above is a place somewhere and sometime in San Francisco. Lots going on: full streetcars, saloons, cobblestone streets... Any ideas? Head to the end of this Grab Bag for the answer!
Return of the Goat Cart
My unnatural appetite for goat-cart photos was nourished this week by Anita B. (F.O.W.), who sent me this circa 1920 shot of her father’s cousin on the 200 block of Duncan Street in Noe Valley.
Our goaty co-star is definitely “King” (as I call him), the handsome horned dude who appears in almost all the San Francisco goat cart images I have ever seen. I think he might be of American Alpine breed (goat people, please correct me), but know nothing else about him.
The eternal mystery of King and his photographer-owner continues…
Holladay Hill
One of the images shared in last week’s lengthy (sorry about that) piece on the Laguna Survey showed the first St. Brigid Church at Broadway and Van Ness and the Lafayette Square park hill:
Did you wonder about that visible building on the hill on the city park land?
No?
You really ought to develop a keener sense of curiosity, because there’s a story here, which also explains why a square public park has an apartment building cut into one part of it, the only privately owned building in a city park:
